The new balance - a conclusion

Comments

@Vinceman.4572 said:
And here is my question because I don't have the time to do the calculations myself nor am I really interested in wasting investing my free time with it:

What exactly is the gear we have to use if we run 2 fb + 1 ren? (Under the assumption we'll easily be able to respec the next balance patch when new gear will be introduced)
I really wanna know how this turns out to be so much superior vs. double chrono, especially on Desmina but also on other bosses with a fixed tank spot.
(And I don't want to have variants, it must be set in stone so we don't have downtimes, I only allow one of the tanks having a 2nd gear available for Demina!)

(Edit: Keep in mind it must be puggable otherwise we have a way more strict comp and decisionmaking which speaks for running the "old" meta. So it has to be realistically applicable. Things like: here you go harrier ren and fb tank, the next ren tank and condi fb and then condi ren + condi fb are no valid solution)

We went with renegade tank/healer
Condi firebrands (viper with firebrand rune, smoldering and concentration sigil)
As well as harrier druid

For us this worked good. Sure we had to go for slightly different tactics on some bosses than we used to.
For example sloth where we used to have supporters eat the shrooms.

We did largos twins cm with double chrono because this comp was more save.
But overall, we had pretty good results. We only did one full clear though leaving out Deimos due to lack of time.

Raid : 10 players.
No one has said we should ban Chrono, no one said we should copy/paste group 1 to group 2. We're looking for more effective boonshare. Chrono has is place, because of aggro, pull, distortion etc; but for alacrity quickness fury etc there are others solutions (and better, I claim) for the main DPS group than chrono-druid.
That's simple.

Or a team composition focusing on 100% Fear duration in combination with: Dread?

Etc.

Maybe we are too narrow-minded on this fixed boon-meta (either by Chrono or FB/Ren) and should take a step back and consider more options than that!
Or maybe I'm completely wrong here and these kind of ideas are just plain stupid and won't work (for whatever reason). They're genuine questions, after all!

@Nimon.7840 said:
We went with renegade tank/healer
Condi firebrands (viper with firebrand rune, smoldering and concentration sigil)
As well as harrier druid

For us this worked good. Sure we had to go for slightly different tactics on some bosses than we used to.
For example sloth where we used to have supporters eat the shrooms.

We did largos twins cm with double chrono because this comp was more save.
But overall, we had pretty good results. We only did one full clear though leaving out Deimos due to lack of time.

This one would support my team still using 2 chronos because we already full cleared on Monday with the old comp without having any issues related to the chrono nerf. Our (stupid) wipes resulted on player fails and funnily on some of the easier bosses not in consequence of some lacking of boons.
But thank you for your reply though.
I'm still not convinced about the superiority, hmm...

make seize the moment and flow of time aoe boon share ( why it has to use utilities to gave boons ratherthan ‘f’ skills? )! and revertbountiful dissolution( boon share on mesmer %90 ripped )( this can be arguable)
! ooorr rework inspiration signet ( again ). this utility turned to support the support skills of other classes now... ( just why? )

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not harder to complete makes no sense. The OP dislikes stack mechanics because it's a punishment to do so from a performance perspective; that is very much speaking to the content completion in my book.

Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

If you think balancing is only driven by performance and justified by comparisons to other classes then prepare to be educated:

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

@phs.6089 said:
So, what happened to 'Raids are easy AF?' If a single class could cheeze it to the grade of being easy AF, clearly there was something wrong, no?

You are confusing the issues. Doable is not the same as enjoyable. Loot in raids is so bad, people like me do it for fun. I have enough LIs to create 2 sets of each legendary armor on my main account alone. So loot is in no way enough incentive to clear raids even once a month.

Raids ARE easy. Enrage timers havent been an issue since W3 release. Is it fun though, to mindlessly, numbly pummel a boss while getting healed by 3-5 heal-supporters? Not having to watch for mechanics? God, no. Its horrid, Id rather go whack the test arena golem for hours. Does this make it challenging? Again, emphatic no. So, yeah... raids ARE easy. And even more so with current balancing. Just bring 4x boss specific top dps, 1 bs, 1 druid, 2 fb or chronos, 1 healer or heal renegade and another dps slot for special mechanics/cleave.

Horrible balance.

Because this:
a) forces DPS to go for top dps again instead of "enough dps", which as we noticed correctly 2 years ago already, breeds lots of toxicity,
b) forces you to change around after each boss, turning raiding into waiting room simulator v2.0 and
c) increases clear time by a lot.

Current balance you are either top tier speedclear team, maybe having fun (though for me, relogging constantly isnt fun, but well... thats subjective) or low tier team bringing too much support to even bother dodging anything anymore.

And why? Because anet went and spread boons, that were used to balance raids/fractals, all over the place. No structure, no vision. Not to mention intrinsic matters like boon stacking or boon re-application were completely disregarded, or we wouldnt have the issues that we now have.

THATS the issue. Not that raids have become difficult. Newsflash, they havent. Quite the opposite, only pugs make it hard on themselves because they dont want to run the strict meta Anet created for them - go figure.

@Setz.9675 said:
If not having permanent protection is an issue go bring a hammer guard.

You do realize hammer guard symbol only works if you can stack and is 5 man? So you'd need to bring 2 of those. Loosing 12k dps on each, thats 24k less squad dps. Sorry, unacceptable.

You do realise you can use GS/hammer and not permanently use hammer right? Losing a few thousand dps to survive an encounter thanks to protection is completely acceptable, and if protection wasnt needed, why bother in the first place?

You do realize that STILL doesnt solve the issue at all? Have you even READ anything I wrote? Sorry, but while I would normally never do that, Im not gonna read more of your posts until you can show at least a tiny bit of reading comprehension.

You still need druid for might and/or protection. A wh tempest could fill that slot too, but tempest doesnt have spirits... so....

@Vinceman.4572 said:What exactly is the gear we have to use if we run 2 fb + 1 ren? (Under the assumption we'll easily be able to respec the next balance patch when new gear will be introduced)
I really wanna know how this turns out to be so much superior vs. double chrono, especially on Desmina but also on other bosses with a fixed tank spot.
(And I don't want to have variants, it must be set in stone so we don't have downtimes, I only allow one of the tanks having a 2nd gear available for Demina!)

(Edit: Keep in mind it must be puggable otherwise we have a way more strict comp and decisionmaking which speaks for running the "old" meta. So it has to be realistically applicable. Things like: here you go harrier ren and fb tank, the next ren tank and condi fb and then condi ren + condi fb are no valid solution)

It really depends on what your goal is. If you want overstacked protection or at least 100% protection, you have to use 2x healbrand. Fury can be achieved with either axe symbol, sword symbol or meditation trait. All have downsides. 25 Might can currently only be achieved with scepter symbol - which forces you to run meditation trait(line) if you dont want to have to bring yet another supporter into the mix.

Renegade needs around 30-40% boon duration without chronos SoI extension for perma alacrity. So either run some weird condi variant to get around 20-24k dps out of it, or go straight for harrier.

Druid cant cover protection alone, so not even 2x quickbrand, 1x condi alacrity renegade works on most bosses. Replace druid with boon herald and you get perma fury, perma protection, perma swiftness... nicely overstacked to last you long enough to do mechanics... but that means no vigor. And only pbaoe healing really. Im currently looking into a power-boon-herald build, but its rather meh. Tomorrow gonna see how boonherald+condi druid performs, though with 2 chronos and not fb/ren comp.

You have to keep in mind, that quickbrand+alacrity renegade only replaces your 2 chronos. Might isnt capped (its only around 5-10 from quickbrands), protection is basically non-existent. No vigor, no swiftness, no retaliation. Barely any regeneration. Its a condi-comp on top, so VG and KC you need some "extra" to even come close to any chrono/druid comp. Renegade ramp up time is pretty long, quickbrands are quite bursty. But yeah, so you need other sources for might, regen, protection, vigor, swiftness, retal. Vigor and retal you can forgo imo. Leaves regen, protection, swiftness and might. Druid can only really offer around 60% boon uptime on protection , if you have to move a lot it drops rapidly. Swiftness only for 1 group. Vigor permanent for 1 grp, the other could have some uptime from sunspirit though its way less than protection from stonespirit even. Might would be covered. Works on some bosses, on most harder ones it just doesnt.

So, alternative would be... shift more boons onto firebrands. Renegade doesnt have even enough access to boons, and since you only want one anyway... they would have to be 10man to keep it simple. So healfirebrands - harrier or givers. Can cover additionally protection, swiftness if theres no boonstrip, retal, a bit more might, adds a touch of vigor, regen is okay. Might still isnt 25, though, so you'd want to add at least a condi druid for that (because it brings frost spirit, entangle, cc pet compared to other might stackers). But that means, you now have a 2-healer comp, with 2 off-supporters doing a bit more dps than chrono team in the past, but tbh... its not much. Fb/ren comp suffers a lot from "looks good on paper, translates badly to actual raids".

For pugs the second variant is optimal for fb/ren comp. Though it means your dps have to do for example at least 1 green - maybe even 2. Because everytime you try to let one of your supporters do mechanics that take longer than 20 seconds, you loose boon uptime.

I know many people do not consider WvW or other game modes as relevant. Sure if all you look at is fractal and raid content then chrono is and has been insanely overpowered. How well was the build performing in all other content? Exactly. This has been the case for quite a while now.

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

yes I read it ... he was complaining about stacking mechanics punishing people for not stacking. That's a performance-based complaint ... even if the OP wants us to think it's not.

If you think balancing is only driven by performance and justified by comparisons to other classes then prepare to be educated:

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

yes I read it ... he was complaining about stacking mechanics punishing people for not stacking. That's a performance-based complaint ... even if the OP wants us to think it's not.

It is not, it actually is both a performance and boss mechanic based complaint... even if you want us to think it's not.

I know many people do not consider WvW or other game modes as relevant. Sure if all you look at is fractal and raid content then chrono is and has been insanely overpowered. How well was the build performing in all other content? Exactly. This has been the case for quite a while now.

its just that it hasn't really changed at all. mes got nerfed and next in line is fb, even tho its capped at 5 targets.

I know many people do not consider WvW or other game modes as relevant. Sure if all you look at is fractal and raid content then chrono is and has been insanely overpowered. How well was the build performing in all other content? Exactly. This has been the case for quite a while now.

its just that it hasn't really changed at all. mes got nerfed and next in line is fb, even tho its capped at 5 targets.

I try to formulate it differently. The problem with last "balance" patch isnt that chrono was nerfed, it had it coming. Problem is that they didnt simultaneously fix the problems known to them for months that alternative comps face.

Yes, fb/ren has more stability and aegis. Thats nice. But does it help against unblockable dmg? Well no. And theres quite a bit unblockable/undodgeable dmg in raids/fractals, for which you'd need protection to reduce that dmg to a level that you dont get downed by it. Most prominent is dhuum encounter, but also ticking arena dmg on some encounters is pretty high.

Did nerfing chrono fix the problem that fb/ren comp has in regards to it being a rather rigid rotation, leaving nearly no room for mechanics? No.

Instead, were before you could add a druid to that comp, or a chrono to supplement missing boons... you cant anymore, its not enough.

Did chrono nerf help with the comp itself being unflexible and leaving barely any "open slots" due to missing role compression? Again - no.

Did chrono nerf and F2 buff help healherald? No. Natural harmony still eats too much energy, heals too much at once, isnt flexible enough. Making it a healer that only really works in situations that lets you stack tightly.

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

yes I read it ... he was complaining about stacking mechanics punishing people for not stacking. That's a performance-based complaint ... even if the OP wants us to think it's not.

It is not, it actually is both a performance and boss mechanic based complaint... even if you want us to think it's not.

Convince yourself whatever you will. If it's NOT a performance based discussion, why the hell would the OP suggest that the raid content devs talk to the balance team? That makes no sense either; balance team doesn't influence 'not fun' raids at all. So which is it?

The basic complaint is that the last balance reduced options for comps and made it more restrictive in play if you want to maintain performance.

If you think balancing is only driven by performance and justified by comparisons to other classes then prepare to be educated:

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

yes I read it ... he was complaining about stacking mechanics punishing people for not stacking. That's a performance-based complaint ... even if the OP wants us to think it's not.

Its about group optimization and that its hard to find a good setup without having to change not only your dps on each encounter, but now also your whole support team. it apears you don´t care about optimization, so what are you even doing here exept derailing the thread?

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

yes I read it ... he was complaining about stacking mechanics punishing people for not stacking. That's a performance-based complaint ... even if the OP wants us to think it's not.

It is not, it actually is both a performance and boss mechanic based complaint... even if you want us to think it's not.

Convince yourself whatever you will. If it's NOT a performance based discussion, why the hell would the OP suggest that the raid content devs talk to the balance team? That makes no sense either; balance team doesn't influence 'not fun' raids at all. So which is it?

The basic complaint is that the last balance reduced options for comps and made it more restrictive in play if you want to maintain performance.

Compositions are based around boss mechanics and game design. I'm not even sure how you can suggest otherwise.

Player performance very often plays less a role in meta comps designed by high skill raid guilds because all their players are top tier and as such the composition (which often get mirrored by the general community for lack of better understanding) are based around boss mechanics.

The complaint of TC as such makes sense, the balance team balances without the content in mind but simply with results say based on boon out put.

@Setz.9675 said:
If not having permanent protection is an issue go bring a hammer guard.

You do realize hammer guard symbol only works if you can stack and is 5 man? So you'd need to bring 2 of those. Loosing 12k dps on each, thats 24k less squad dps. Sorry, unacceptable.

You do realise you can use GS/hammer and not permanently use hammer right? Losing a few thousand dps to survive an encounter thanks to protection is completely acceptable, and if protection wasnt needed, why bother in the first place?

You do realize that STILL doesnt solve the issue at all? Have you even READ anything I wrote? Sorry, but while I would normally never do that, Im not gonna read more of your posts until you can show at least a tiny bit of reading comprehension.

Chrono's arent the sole supplyers of boons since post-patch and this is something too difficult to grasp for you. The part of ''STILL doesnt solve the issue at all'' isn't an issue at all, its you feeling entitled to having all boons all the time nothing more nothing less.
But do keep talking trash about raids, how they arent fun unless you can skip mechanics and turn bosses into health golems or how the rewards are bad even though raiding efficiently nets a person well over 30g/hour. Its really funny for me to see someone clowning around trying to hold on to the old ways.

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

That happens when you start to balance encounters around the top percenters in a game where performance of those can be several times greater than of average player.

@Nimon.7840 said:
Because these 2 firebrands together can easily do the same DPS as 1,5 regular DPS players.

Not if one of them is going to be a tank.
Forgot about that one, did you?

Do we need a tank anymore?

On some (like MO) we do not (and we never did), but on most, yes, we still do, because the balance did not change anything about those fights. Good luck doing Desmina without two tanks, for most visible example.

@Obtena.7952 said:
If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete?

Because fake difficulty is not fun.

The whole point of a social game is to play with the people you want to play with, not be forced to play with the people you don't.

@Setz.9675 said:
Chrono's arent the sole supplyers of boons since post-patch and this is something too difficult to grasp for you. The part of ''STILL doesnt solve the issue at all'' isn't an issue at all, its you feeling entitled to having all boons all the time nothing more nothing less.
But do keep talking trash about raids, how they arent fun unless you can skip mechanics and turn bosses into health golems or how the rewards are bad even though raiding efficiently nets a person well over 30g/hour. Its really funny for me to see someone clowning around trying to hold on to the old ways.

A full raid clear is below 60g in total, excluding mats and drop luck. But mats are not that worth so your 30g/hour isn't really realistic. Not even speed clear guilds are clearing all 6 wings on the fly. Compared to other content and the fact that raids are and should be the most challenging content in the game its rewards are bad.

@Setz.9675 said:
If not having permanent protection is an issue go bring a hammer guard.

You do realize hammer guard symbol only works if you can stack and is 5 man? So you'd need to bring 2 of those. Loosing 12k dps on each, thats 24k less squad dps. Sorry, unacceptable.

You do realise you can use GS/hammer and not permanently use hammer right? Losing a few thousand dps to survive an encounter thanks to protection is completely acceptable, and if protection wasnt needed, why bother in the first place?

You do realize that STILL doesnt solve the issue at all? Have you even READ anything I wrote? Sorry, but while I would normally never do that, Im not gonna read more of your posts until you can show at least a tiny bit of reading comprehension.

Chrono's arent the sole supplyers of boons since post-patch and this is something too difficult to grasp for you. The part of ''STILL doesnt solve the issue at all'' isn't an issue at all, its you feeling entitled to having all boons all the time nothing more nothing less.
But do keep talking trash about raids, how they arent fun unless you can skip mechanics and turn bosses into health golems or how the rewards are bad even though raiding efficiently nets a person well over 30g/hour. Its really funny for me to see someone clowning around trying to hold on to the old ways.

Chrono's weren't the sole suppliers of boons before the patch. That argument is m00t. Firebrand and Revenant were just as viable then. The only difference is that instead of addressing issues of why Firebrand and Revenant were not getting taken (even though especially Fireband was already THE go-to class in WvW next to Scrouge) Arenanet proceeded to nerf chrono, again. Also just like the last 3 nerfs, it simply shifted the imbalance. I've seen the first PUG groups search for dps chronos/mirages next to tank and support chrono (obviously for more SoI boon up-time).

Also your reward math is way off. Not sure if that indicates that you haven't ever actually speed cleared any raids and are just assuming and making numbers up.

@Obtena.7952 said:
If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete?

Because fake difficulty is not fun.

This.

Anybody who assumes that veteran raiders (most at 1k+ LI) are having issues with raids due to difficulty has no clue how much this content is on farm status. There is nothing against shaking up the meta, but do it in a way which does not create un-fun hurdles because classes aren't given proper tools to deal with raid boss mechanics.

@Setz.9675 said:
If not having permanent protection is an issue go bring a hammer guard.

You do realize hammer guard symbol only works if you can stack and is 5 man? So you'd need to bring 2 of those. Loosing 12k dps on each, thats 24k less squad dps. Sorry, unacceptable.

You do realise you can use GS/hammer and not permanently use hammer right? Losing a few thousand dps to survive an encounter thanks to protection is completely acceptable, and if protection wasnt needed, why bother in the first place?

You do realize that STILL doesnt solve the issue at all? Have you even READ anything I wrote? Sorry, but while I would normally never do that, Im not gonna read more of your posts until you can show at least a tiny bit of reading comprehension.

Chrono's arent the sole supplyers of boons since post-patch and this is something too difficult to grasp for you. The part of ''STILL doesnt solve the issue at all'' isn't an issue at all, its you feeling entitled to having all boons all the time nothing more nothing less.
But do keep talking trash about raids, how they arent fun unless you can skip mechanics and turn bosses into health golems or how the rewards are bad even though raiding efficiently nets a person well over 30g/hour. Its really funny for me to see someone clowning around trying to hold on to the old ways.

Chrono's weren't the sole suppliers of boons before the patch. That argument is m00t. Firebrand and Revenant were just as viable then. The only difference is that instead of addressing issues of why Firebrand and Revenant were not getting taken (even though especially Fireband was already THE go-to class in WvW next to Scrouge) Arenanet proceeded to nerf chrono, again. Also just like the last 3 nerfs, it simply shifted the imbalance. I've seen the first PUG groups search for dps chronos/mirages next to tank and support chrono (obviously for more SoI boon up-time).

Oh woops my bad, chrono didnt provide 25 might now my argument is m00t hahahaha, or let 2 proffs (rev+fb) replace 1 proff (chrono), people did this at the higher end of raiding wow dude you sure showed me my wrongs lmfao, also this is the raids/fractal/dungeon forum, good job moving the goalpost to WvW, you know the thing we werent discussing here at all.

Also your reward math is way off. Not sure if that indicates that you haven't ever actually speed cleared any raids and are just assuming and making numbers up.

2.5-3 hours for full clear gold drops alone for 6 wings is more than 50gold. 400 ish HoT tokens from mini's/ascended salvage per week, 180 ish PoF tokens from clear/mini/salvage + exotics with sometimes a good sigil. HoT tokens --> ghostly infusion for 80g profit every 1k tokens, PoF tokens --> qadim statue stuff for 30g profit every 150 tokens, but my maffs way off n sheet and I dont know what the ef im talking about omegalul

@Obtena.7952 said:
If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete?

Because fake difficulty is not fun.

This.

Anybody who assumes that veteran raiders (most at 1k+ LI) are having issues with raids due to difficulty has no clue how much this content is on farm status. There is nothing against shaking up the meta, but do it in a way which does not create un-fun hurdles because classes aren't given proper tools to deal with raid boss mechanics.

what the hell is fake difficulty? un-fun bosses because you blindly stare at pure dps classes that sacrifice everything to get bigger numbers suddenly dont have the tools do deal with the boss. Classes have plenty of tools, people simply dont use them.

@Setz.9675 said:
Chrono's arent the sole supplyers of boons since post-patch and this is something too difficult to grasp for you. The part of ''STILL doesnt solve the issue at all'' isn't an issue at all, its you feeling entitled to having all boons all the time nothing more nothing less.
But do keep talking trash about raids, how they arent fun unless you can skip mechanics and turn bosses into health golems or how the rewards are bad even though raiding efficiently nets a person well over 30g/hour. Its really funny for me to see someone clowning around trying to hold on to the old ways.

A full raid clear is below 60g in total, excluding mats and drop luck. But mats are not that worth so your 30g/hour isn't really realistic. Not even speed clear guilds are clearing all 6 wings on the fly. Compared to other content and the fact that raids are and should be the most challenging content in the game its rewards are bad.

And thats where you are wrong buddy. Because a full raid clear can easily be done in < 3.5 hours if you arent bad and not have people take breaks after every boss.
Gold rewards alone from the bosses is always >50gold due to 2 wings being double rewards. Then you convert your mini's into tokens and weapons/armor drops as well netting you every week around 400 HoT tokens, and for every 1k tokens you buy a ghostly infusion and sell it for a modest 80g profit. PoF wings nets you 200 ish tokens every week which you use to buy the jinn/qadim statue stuff for another 30g profit /week or save it up for that dhuum chair for a nice 300 ish gold profit. Which in totals nets you arent 30g/hour. Also if you arent converting your armors and weapons into tokens your profit is even larger because a single ascended weapon/armor piece costs 40-70g to craft which you dont have to do thansk to your drops.

@Setz.9675 said:
And thats where you are wrong buddy. Because a full raid clear can easily be done in .5 hours if you arent bad and not have people take breaks after every boss.
Gold rewards alone from the bosses is always >50gold due to 2 wings being double rewards. Then you convert your mini's into tokens and weapons/armor drops as well netting you every week around 400 HoT tokens, and for every 1k tokens you buy a ghostly infusion and sell it for a modest 80g profit. PoF wings nets you 200 ish tokens every week which you use to buy the jinn/qadim statue stuff for another 30g profit /week or save it up for that dhuum chair for a nice 300 ish gold profit. Which in totals nets you arent 30g/hour. Also if you arent converting your armors and weapons into tokens your profit is even larger because a single ascended weapon/armor piece costs 40-70g to craft which you dont have to do thansk to your drops.

First of all 3.5h isn't fast and no, I'm not your buddy.
Secondly, I'm not netting 400 HoT tokens every week and there are lots of weeks where you even don't get a single asc drop to convert into tokens. Same with wing 5/6 tokens. You exaggerate so much in numbers here.
And even if you are making 60g+ it's still bad compared to many other things in the game. Numbers are even worse if you count every reward that tight you are trying to sell here. Fractals (pristines & normal relics) then are a gold mine in relation to raids and they are much easier. It's obvious I don't need to mention the words Istan and Silverwastes here.
You can say that in your subjective thinking raid rewards are good for you but they can't stand a chance against most of the other content that is so much easier to conquer.
Sorry, I'm not buying your skritt.

@Setz.9675 said:
And thats where you are wrong buddy. Because a full raid clear can easily be done in .5 hours if you arent bad and not have people take breaks after every boss.
Gold rewards alone from the bosses is always >50gold due to 2 wings being double rewards. Then you convert your mini's into tokens and weapons/armor drops as well netting you every week around 400 HoT tokens, and for every 1k tokens you buy a ghostly infusion and sell it for a modest 80g profit. PoF wings nets you 200 ish tokens every week which you use to buy the jinn/qadim statue stuff for another 30g profit /week or save it up for that dhuum chair for a nice 300 ish gold profit. Which in totals nets you arent 30g/hour. Also if you arent converting your armors and weapons into tokens your profit is even larger because a single ascended weapon/armor piece costs 40-70g to craft which you dont have to do thansk to your drops.

First of all 3.5h isn't fast and no, I'm not your buddy.
Secondly, I'm not netting 400 HoT tokens every week and there are lots of weeks where you even don't get a single asc drop to convert into tokens. Same with wing 5/6 tokens. You exaggerate so much in numbers here.
And even if you are making 60g+ it's still bad compared to many other things in the game. Numbers are even worse if you count every reward that tight you are trying to sell here. Fractals (pristines & normal relics) then are a gold mine in relation to raids and they are much easier. It's obvious I don't need to mention the words Istan and Silverwastes here.
You can say that in your subjective thinking raid rewards are good for you but they can't stand a chance against most of the other content that is so much easier to conquer.
Sorry, I'm not buying your skritt.

Sure some weeks you wont get a single drop and then next week you return with 8 minis and 2 weapons from xera but whatever have fun sticking your head in the sand. It's obvious you arent mentioning open world content like HoT meta's or vanilla world bosses, because those are actually bad rewards compared to time investment. But no let's compare raids to the top gold making strategy, and if raids doesnt make more than the rewards are bad. Ye not buying your nonsense either.

@Setz.9675 said:
And thats where you are wrong buddy. Because a full raid clear can easily be done in .5 hours if you arent bad and not have people take breaks after every boss.
Gold rewards alone from the bosses is always >50gold due to 2 wings being double rewards. Then you convert your mini's into tokens and weapons/armor drops as well netting you every week around 400 HoT tokens, and for every 1k tokens you buy a ghostly infusion and sell it for a modest 80g profit. PoF wings nets you 200 ish tokens every week which you use to buy the jinn/qadim statue stuff for another 30g profit /week or save it up for that dhuum chair for a nice 300 ish gold profit. Which in totals nets you arent 30g/hour. Also if you arent converting your armors and weapons into tokens your profit is even larger because a single ascended weapon/armor piece costs 40-70g to craft which you dont have to do thansk to your drops.

First of all 3.5h isn't fast and no, I'm not your buddy.
Secondly, I'm not netting 400 HoT tokens every week and there are lots of weeks where you even don't get a single asc drop to convert into tokens. Same with wing 5/6 tokens. You exaggerate so much in numbers here.
And even if you are making 60g+ it's still bad compared to many other things in the game. Numbers are even worse if you count every reward that tight you are trying to sell here. Fractals (pristines & normal relics) then are a gold mine in relation to raids and they are much easier. It's obvious I don't need to mention the words Istan and Silverwastes here.
You can say that in your subjective thinking raid rewards are good for you but they can't stand a chance against most of the other content that is so much easier to conquer.
Sorry, I'm not buying your skritt.

Sure some weeks you wont get a single drop and then next week you return with 8 minis and 2 weapons from xera but whatever have fun sticking your head in the sand. It's obvious you arent mentioning open world content like HoT meta's or vanilla world bosses, because those are actually bad rewards compared to time investment. But no let's compare raids to the top gold making strategy, and if raids doesnt make more than the rewards are bad. Ye not buying your nonsense either.

Vanilla RIBA farm remains one of the most lucrative farms in the game. Still at around 25-30 gold per hour if you convert everything.
HoT TD -> AB is one of the most lucrative farms in game still.
PoF Istan is still going very strong.
Boss runs are still popular even if they are only medium reward wise.

Raids yield 22 bosses or boss events yielding 2 gold each with 2 bonus wings yielding 4 gold. That is at best 28 gold + 32 gold = 60 gold in direct liquid reward. Now let's add in the bags which amount to around 5-10 gold depending on how lucky you get. Let's add another 10-20 gold from potentially exotic items. That's a total of 75 - 90 gold before Magnetite Shards and Gaeting Crystals. Let's assume 300 Magnetite Shards per week and 200 Gaeting Crystals (from selling and salvaging everything you get), at current conversion rates that comes out to about another 28 - 36 gold with buying the Ghostly Infusion and selling it as well as another 25 - 30 gold for the Bench of the Final Judge.

So you end up with a total of around 75+28+25 = 128 gold to 90+36+30 = 156 gold per clear with VERY generous estimates on my part and converting ALL gains into money.

Now let's assume 3 hours clear time (we are talking very pro static here with weeks or months of practice) that amounts to 41 gold to 52 gold per hour once per week. This is not factoring in ANY time for practice, getting this good, adapting builds and play style. Compared to the most efficient farms in game which yield 25 - 30 gold with 0 effort and investment.

No way are you getting 60 gold per hour, not even close. I doubt you are converting all your Magnetite Shards and Gaeting Crystals and even then your 60 gold are far far off and not consistent. If you are not converting all you get or not running a perfect static, you are below what people make with open world farms by a lot.

right before you went on to mention some of the most popular farms in the game. Legit.

EDIT: just for the record, I could have done the top calculation with a lot less generosity and your statement would have been even more ludicrous incorrect. A decent player not converting all their gains into gold will be at about 15-20 gold per hour with raids. That's okay but not stellar compared to the effort involved.

@Setz.9675 said:
And thats where you are wrong buddy. Because a full raid clear can easily be done in .5 hours if you arent bad and not have people take breaks after every boss.
Gold rewards alone from the bosses is always >50gold due to 2 wings being double rewards. Then you convert your mini's into tokens and weapons/armor drops as well netting you every week around 400 HoT tokens, and for every 1k tokens you buy a ghostly infusion and sell it for a modest 80g profit. PoF wings nets you 200 ish tokens every week which you use to buy the jinn/qadim statue stuff for another 30g profit /week or save it up for that dhuum chair for a nice 300 ish gold profit. Which in totals nets you arent 30g/hour. Also if you arent converting your armors and weapons into tokens your profit is even larger because a single ascended weapon/armor piece costs 40-70g to craft which you dont have to do thansk to your drops.

First of all 3.5h isn't fast and no, I'm not your buddy.
Secondly, I'm not netting 400 HoT tokens every week and there are lots of weeks where you even don't get a single asc drop to convert into tokens. Same with wing 5/6 tokens. You exaggerate so much in numbers here.
And even if you are making 60g+ it's still bad compared to many other things in the game. Numbers are even worse if you count every reward that tight you are trying to sell here. Fractals (pristines & normal relics) then are a gold mine in relation to raids and they are much easier. It's obvious I don't need to mention the words Istan and Silverwastes here.
You can say that in your subjective thinking raid rewards are good for you but they can't stand a chance against most of the other content that is so much easier to conquer.
Sorry, I'm not buying your skritt.

Sure some weeks you wont get a single drop and then next week you return with 8 minis and 2 weapons from xera but whatever have fun sticking your head in the sand. It's obvious you arent mentioning open world content like HoT meta's or vanilla world bosses, because those are actually bad rewards compared to time investment. But no let's compare raids to the top gold making strategy, and if raids doesnt make more than the rewards are bad. Ye not buying your nonsense either.

Vanilla RIBA farm remains one of the most lucrative farms in the game. Still at around 25-30 gold per hour if you convert everything.
HoT TD -> AB is one of the most lucrative farms in game still.
PoF Istan is still going very strong.
Boss runs are still popular even if they are only medium reward wise.

Raids yield 22 bosses or boss events yielding 2 gold each with 2 bonus wings yielding 4 gold. That is at best 28 gold + 32 gold = 60 gold in direct liquid reward. Now let's add in the bags which amount to around 5-10 gold depending on how lucky you get. Let's add another 10-20 gold from potentially exotic items. That's a total of 75 - 90 gold before Magnetite Shards and Gaeting Crystals. Let's assume 300 Magnetite Shards per week and 200 Gaeting Crystals (from selling and salvaging everything you get), at current conversion rates that comes out to about another 28 - 36 gold with buying the Ghostly Infusion and selling it as well as another 25 - 30 gold for the Bench of the Final Judge.

So you end up with a total of around 75+28+25 = 128 gold to 90+36+30 = 156 gold per clear with VERY generous estimates on my part and converting ALL gains into money.

Now let's assume 3 hours clear time (we are talking very pro static here with weeks or months of practice) that amounts to 41 gold to 52 gold per hour once per week. This is not factoring in ANY time for practice, getting this good, adapting builds and play style. Compared to the most efficient farms in game which yield 25 - 30 gold with 0 effort and investment.

No way are you getting 60 gold per hour, not even close. I doubt you are converting all your Magnetite Shards and Gaeting Crystals and even then your 60 gold are far far off and not consistent. If you are not converting all you get or not running a perfect static, you are below what people make with open world farms by a lot.

right before you went on to mention some of the most popular farms in the game. Legit.

EDIT: just for the record, I could have done the top calculation with a lot less generosity and your statement would have been even more ludicrous incorrect. A decent player not converting all their gains into gold will be at about 15-20 gold per hour with raids. That's okay but not stellar compared to the effort involved.

I'm not necessarilly agreeing, or disagreeing with anything anyone has said, but I just wanted to point out that your estimation, while probably accurate doesn't mean that the devs intended for it to be farmed in such a way, using the same repeated method, which may in turn have resulted in the balance patch. I think the devs may create meta, but meta is meta for a Reason. Meta means you use things the devs may not have planned for to be much more efficient than you're meant to be. It's -technically- not a bug, with an emphasis on -technically-. That means the devs were more than likely bound to address it sooner or later, if they consider it falls outside of their original plan. That's how they defended their point of view on mesmer changes for high end content (their word), which means they have their own view on the raid content, which is most likely not concordant with that of players. In my opinion, more changes are on the way in raiding future.

To be more accurate, I think the devs are watching at how easy clears are with a given method, and if one method makes it too easy, and repeatable, they'll try to lower player efficiency in order for it to be actually taxing. It's more subtle outside of raids, but in Fractals, the random instabilities contribute to upsetting player methods, while on newer maps, you have to contend with unusually aggressive mobs, with farther range. They even upset mounts abilities to skip over mob encounters in their latest 2 maps (Jahai and Kourna) with a lot of mobs making sure we get dismounted via high damage ranged attacks that repeats, making it harder to dodge on a mount. I think the devs definitely want to fight back against fullproof methods. So I expect raids to become more difficult to complete using the same set of Tools (same profession roster). They want to add more random factors to the formula by splitting roles I think, to avoid the 1 method 100% success (provided all goes well).

@phs.6089 said:
I'll repeat this: the message was loud and clear.
Give your HoT classes a rest, PoF is out for a year now.
Try and see what you can do.

I tried. Repeatedly. It only works on some raidbosses, and then only with a very very fixed comp that supplies missing utility/boons. Because anet didnt solve the problems of that comp, they just threw more aegis/stab/dps at it and tried to nerf the hot competition enough to make the pof variant look better.

Id love for fb/ren to be a thing. I love playing alacrity renegade (both harrier and condi) and firebrand is just so op. If the game was only about quickness, alacrity, stability and aegis... fb/ren comp would win hands down. But it isnt. Its also about being able to stack boons to leave to do mechanics, its about being able to bring additional utility, while doing your "core" job.

So, what happened to 'Raids are easy AF?' If a single class could cheeze it to the grade of being easy AF, clearly there was something wrong, no?

This reminds me days Brawler was introduced in Tera and Mystic got Revamp
You could slap a mystic with 4 brawlers and there was nothing that this composition couldn't clear.

New dungeon came with brawler and 'slaying run' was done in under 6 hours. There were 'sigils' that increase your crit damage if your HP was below 50% they called 'slaying'

Raids are easy AF. Do changes like in the last patch make it fun? No. I feel like people who go "Yeee this patch is awesome, go play something else and git gut." don't play raids that much. Yes, it's fun to do something challenging like some CMs once. ONCE. But if you think how you need to deal with having way slower gameplay overall when it already is slow, this game is like playing chess with new player that does 1 move a minute.
All i hear from people who like this patch is "Think of a new build scrubs" and then they proceed to wait for meta build to get released. Surprise, surprise meta builds are not illuminati made concept, but it is provided by players who spend hundreds of hours and thousands of gold on finding what is the best possible solution and guess what, working people don't have that much time to invest into researching it themselves.
The thing is right now that the ONLY best solution (which ofc isnt good to have only 1 good solution) has been nerfed to the ground and there is nothing even comparably good enough AND fun enough to replace it. I know few chrono mains who were die hard fans of their class. They loved the variablity in the build and now they are just so demotivated to even play the game. Balance patch shouldn't make you want to quit the game.

I thought it was really interesting when Deadeye was introduced with the "Fire for Effect" trait that grants might to allies near you as well as near your target since this, in theory, opened the door to having a more spread out group, or at least a ranged and melee sub-group that could receive might stacks.

Of course, in practice, this doesn't work at all since almost every other boon in the game doesn't get spread over a distance as well as this, particularly with Chrono skills, but I think the devs would do well to making more changes to skills like "Fire for Effect" so that raids and other encounters with interesting mechanics aren't always in direct opposition of the need to stay huddled in a little boon-sharing ball all the time.

@Setz.9675 said:
And thats where you are wrong buddy. Because a full raid clear can easily be done in .5 hours if you arent bad and not have people take breaks after every boss.
Gold rewards alone from the bosses is always >50gold due to 2 wings being double rewards. Then you convert your mini's into tokens and weapons/armor drops as well netting you every week around 400 HoT tokens, and for every 1k tokens you buy a ghostly infusion and sell it for a modest 80g profit. PoF wings nets you 200 ish tokens every week which you use to buy the jinn/qadim statue stuff for another 30g profit /week or save it up for that dhuum chair for a nice 300 ish gold profit. Which in totals nets you arent 30g/hour. Also if you arent converting your armors and weapons into tokens your profit is even larger because a single ascended weapon/armor piece costs 40-70g to craft which you dont have to do thansk to your drops.

First of all 3.5h isn't fast and no, I'm not your buddy.
Secondly, I'm not netting 400 HoT tokens every week and there are lots of weeks where you even don't get a single asc drop to convert into tokens. Same with wing 5/6 tokens. You exaggerate so much in numbers here.
And even if you are making 60g+ it's still bad compared to many other things in the game. Numbers are even worse if you count every reward that tight you are trying to sell here. Fractals (pristines & normal relics) then are a gold mine in relation to raids and they are much easier. It's obvious I don't need to mention the words Istan and Silverwastes here.
You can say that in your subjective thinking raid rewards are good for you but they can't stand a chance against most of the other content that is so much easier to conquer.
Sorry, I'm not buying your skritt.

Sure some weeks you wont get a single drop and then next week you return with 8 minis and 2 weapons from xera but whatever have fun sticking your head in the sand. It's obvious you arent mentioning open world content like HoT meta's or vanilla world bosses, because those are actually bad rewards compared to time investment. But no let's compare raids to the top gold making strategy, and if raids doesnt make more than the rewards are bad. Ye not buying your nonsense either.

Vanilla RIBA farm remains one of the most lucrative farms in the game. Still at around 25-30 gold per hour if you convert everything.
HoT TD -> AB is one of the most lucrative farms in game still.
PoF Istan is still going very strong.
Boss runs are still popular even if they are only medium reward wise.

Raids yield 22 bosses or boss events yielding 2 gold each with 2 bonus wings yielding 4 gold. That is at best 28 gold + 32 gold = 60 gold in direct liquid reward. Now let's add in the bags which amount to around 5-10 gold depending on how lucky you get. Let's add another 10-20 gold from potentially exotic items. That's a total of 75 - 90 gold before Magnetite Shards and Gaeting Crystals. Let's assume 300 Magnetite Shards per week and 200 Gaeting Crystals (from selling and salvaging everything you get), at current conversion rates that comes out to about another 28 - 36 gold with buying the Ghostly Infusion and selling it as well as another 25 - 30 gold for the Bench of the Final Judge.

So you end up with a total of around 75+28+25 = 128 gold to 90+36+30 = 156 gold per clear with VERY generous estimates on my part and converting ALL gains into money.

Now let's assume 3 hours clear time (we are talking very pro static here with weeks or months of practice) that amounts to 41 gold to 52 gold per hour once per week. This is not factoring in ANY time for practice, getting this good, adapting builds and play style. Compared to the most efficient farms in game which yield 25 - 30 gold with 0 effort and investment.

No way are you getting 60 gold per hour, not even close. I doubt you are converting all your Magnetite Shards and Gaeting Crystals and even then your 60 gold are far far off and not consistent. If you are not converting all you get or not running a perfect static, you are below what people make with open world farms by a lot.

right before you went on to mention some of the most popular farms in the game. Legit.

EDIT: just for the record, I could have done the top calculation with a lot less generosity and your statement would have been even more ludicrous incorrect. A decent player not converting all their gains into gold will be at about 15-20 gold per hour with raids. That's okay but not stellar compared to the effort involved.

Couldn't have written it better and agree more. Thanks again for this post.

No way are you getting 60 gold per hour, not even close. I doubt you are converting all your Magnetite Shards and Gaeting Crystals and even then your 60 gold are far far off and not consistent. If you are not converting all you get or not running a perfect static, you are below what people make with open world farms by a lot.

At what point did I say 60g/hour? Please do point it out because I cant let that typo go, 30g/hour while raiding is very doable is what I said. When looking at raid rewards, the unique skins can have good personal value as well and you wont get those in open world farming.

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

yes I read it ... he was complaining about stacking mechanics punishing people for not stacking. That's a performance-based complaint ... even if the OP wants us to think it's not.

It is not, it actually is both a performance and boss mechanic based complaint... even if you want us to think it's not.

Convince yourself whatever you will. If it's NOT a performance based discussion, why the hell would the OP suggest that the raid content devs talk to the balance team? That makes no sense either; balance team doesn't influence 'not fun' raids at all. So which is it?

The basic complaint is that the last balance reduced options for comps and made it more restrictive in play if you want to maintain performance.

Compositions are based around boss mechanics and game design. I'm not even sure how you can suggest otherwise.

... good thing I have not ONCE so far suggested that compositions aren't based around game mechanics /shrug

Player performance very often plays less a role in meta comps designed by high skill raid guilds because all their players are top tier and as such the composition (which often get mirrored by the general community for lack of better understanding) are based around boss mechanics.

The complaint of TC as such makes sense, the balance team balances without the content in mind but simply with results say based on boon out put.

The idea that class skills are balanced around content doesn’t make sense, ever; there is much more constancy with classes and their abilities than there is with content and the mechanics that govern them. Also, it's hard enough for devs to just balance classes let alone ensure that whatever that balance is, it further restricted by the imaginations of content devs to ensure players subjective sense of what is 'fun' is placated to.

Sure, maybe there is too much favour towards stacking … and the solution to that shouldn’t be for the balance team to provide players with comps that allow them to ignore those mechanics like was happening with the absolutely and ridiculously broken Chrono boon giving, sharing AND duration increase builds.

If you think balancing is only driven by performance and justified by comparisons to other classes then prepare to be educated:

Fault of the game design as a whole if in order to be successful you need a class whose only purpose is to spit out endless boons then.
If the game is clunky without boons, it isn't the fault of the class.

@Obtena.7952 said:
The idea that class skills are balanced around content doesn’t make sense, ever;

And yet they are balanced that way. They always were (although in the beginning it was mostly SPvP content they were balanced around). And there were at least a few case of builds getting nerfed in all modes because they happened to be overperforming in one single situation (like that thief build that got hit with a nerfbat because someone used it to solo Sloth - even if it took him few hours). And guardian staff got first nerfed and completely redone later on only because some people were using it to attack through gates in WvW.

But yeah, classes aren't balanced around content. Not at all [/sarcasm]

The whole point of a social game is to play with the people you want to play with, not be forced to play with the people you don't.

@Obtena.7952 said:
The idea that class skills are balanced around content doesn’t make sense, ever;

And yet they are balanced that way. They always were (although in the beginning it was mostly SPvP content they were balanced around). And there were at least a few case of builds getting nerfed in all modes because they happened to be overperforming in one single situation (like that thief build that got hit with a nerfbat because someone used it to solo Sloth - even if it took him few hours). And guardian staff got first nerfed and completely redone later on only because some people were using it to attack through gates in WvW.

But yeah, classes aren't balanced around content. Not at all [/sarcasm]

The scope of what we are talking about here is instanced group content, and that is what my statement was referring to; if you want to change the goal posts in the discussion to include WvW to be semantic, then I get a chance to clarify. Anet isn't going to continue to allow a situation where people access OP'ed specs to trivialize game mechanics and content in PVE, even if it means it changes the 'fun' for a portion of the players. Your examples are what appears to be fixing unintended features , not balancing because of performance; bad correlation on your part. The post above yours says it eloquently:

@Aldath.1275 said:
Fault of the game design as a whole if in order to be successful you need a class whose only purpose is to spit out endless boons then.
If the game is clunky without boons, it isn't the fault of the class.

If you think balancing is only driven by performance and justified by comparisons to other classes then prepare to be educated:

@Jeknar.6184 said:
If bosses are dying without enraging, why are we complaining?

Because bosses need to die in optimal time with at least half of timer left as halved kill time means half as much mechanics and lot faster runs in general. Therefore squads should be optimized for maximal dps and minimal support (to very riskful degree). And no, potential wipes don't count. Wiping twice on most bosses is still faster than taking extra support 'cause extra support means getting close to enrage and soooo much more mechanics that wipe would happen inevitably anyway 'cause someone would mess up a mechanic for sure if kills take that long and even extra support wouldn't help it. Extra dps would've saved from that happening. And ofc we're not talking about anything that does 31k or less on golem, those builds aren't meta and risk a wipe with their lower dps. We need something with 34k+ dps since we can cover golem-like conditions on our runs with 100% certainty, especially when pugging.

^short version of the stuff Kitty hears when people explain the mandatoryness of metabuilds and strats in every situation.

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

yes I read it ... he was complaining about stacking mechanics punishing people for not stacking. That's a performance-based complaint ... even if the OP wants us to think it's not.

It is not, it actually is both a performance and boss mechanic based complaint... even if you want us to think it's not.

Convince yourself whatever you will. If it's NOT a performance based discussion, why the hell would the OP suggest that the raid content devs talk to the balance team? That makes no sense either; balance team doesn't influence 'not fun' raids at all. So which is it?

The basic complaint is that the last balance reduced options for comps and made it more restrictive in play if you want to maintain performance.

Compositions are based around boss mechanics and game design. I'm not even sure how you can suggest otherwise.

... good thing I have not ONCE so far suggested that compositions aren't based around game mechanics /shrug

Player performance very often plays less a role in meta comps designed by high skill raid guilds because all their players are top tier and as such the composition (which often get mirrored by the general community for lack of better understanding) are based around boss mechanics.

The complaint of TC as such makes sense, the balance team balances without the content in mind but simply with results say based on boon out put.

The idea that class skills are balanced around content doesn’t make sense, ever; there is much more constancy with classes and their abilities than there is with content and the mechanics that govern them. Also, it's hard enough for devs to just balance classes let alone ensure that whatever that balance is, it further restricted by the imaginations of content devs to ensure players subjective sense of what is 'fun' is placated to.

Sure, maybe there is too much favour towards stacking … and the solution to that shouldn’t be for the balance team to provide players with comps that allow them to ignore those mechanics like was happening with the absolutely and ridiculously broken Chrono boon giving, sharing AND duration increase builds.

For one thing... stacking IS a mechanic, is THE mechanic in mmos since, well, 2 decades now. LoS pull and stacking. Other mmos managed buffing, stacking and mechanics in raids/dungeons/whatever... why does Anet have such a hard time at it? My guess, because they dont actually have a set of groundrules and just adjust here and there to get a desired endresult, with rather not much success tbh.

Another thing, this thread is in NO way a "oh no chrono got nerfed"-whine thread, no matter how you and others are (forcibly) trying to make it into one. This thread is about how Anet went and changed chrono - the only "buffer" build in gw2 - without fixing the alternative comps first. This could have been prevented easily by just talking to the raids/fractals devs. Theres quite a lot of things wrong with the balance atm in regards to raids and fractals. Most caused by the balance team trying to promote a playstyle that just doesnt work properly.

a) Aegis vs protection: some raid encounters mechanics do so much dmg, that even if you execute them correctly, you can still end up loosing 70%+ of your life if you dont have protection, in case of dhuum bombs for example, max range detonated bomb does way too much dmg without protection... or without protection most dps classes cant run out and use the button without dieing on the way back. So this is a very important boon on some encounters, way more important than for example aegis. But guess what firebrand kitten out in higher quantity? Yep. Aegis. For protection you need a dedicated weapon and/or shout. And then you need boon duration for it. Aegis on the other hand you really do NOT need every 10 seconds. Thats just way overkill, except for dh. And even there you could argue it is overkill, because it blows the virtues traitline dmg out of proportions.

b) Aegis+Stability vs vigor: Firebrand with its aegis and stability spam teaches players not to dodge. Thats even more exacerbated by the fact that if you lack vigor, you tend to dodge less anyway. Yes, this is a dmg increase, but no its not "skillful" in any way, and it generates a lazy playstyle.

c) Stacking vs mechanics: Quite obvious. Balance team wants us to stack and never leave the stack, punishes us severly for mechanics that make us leave the stack. Raid team wants us to do mechanics. Now what is it?

d) Balance team pushes for 4-5 supporter specs in raids, 2-3 supporter in fractals. While I dont have anything against this, just adding 1 healscrapper to gorseval for example already lets you totally ignore the cc retal phase. It lets you ignore and facetank mechanics that you SHOULD work around instead. Is that how we are now supposed to raid/do fractals? By just facetanking everything because skill isnt rewarded anymore, even punished? I really dont think thats what the devs had in mind when designing raids/fractals. Yes, more supporter, more hybrids make instanced content easier. Every mmo veteran could have told Anet that,

e) Prestacking in fractals at singularity. That this is even a thing, and has been a thing now for months is a disgrace, and just shows how the balance team just plainly ignores 5 man content. You cant atm really remove it though, because immediately people would notice how badly unbalanced the balance is in regards to boons.

I could go on, but its already a wall of text.. so.. let me just finish with one more notice to all those thinking that this thread is me whining about not being able to complete raids/fractals/whatever because I lost my OP chrono. I consider fb/ren comp in many ways superior to chrono, especially on every boss that you can go full offense on, like gorseval, sabetha, xera, cairn. It however falls far behind druid/chrono comp as soon as you need defense. Because fb/ren comp isnt well rounded. Druid/chrono comp was - and still is, they just added punishments in for everyone that is stupid enough... Im sorry... is good enough... to do mechanics. And to add insult to injury, you can adapt the comp to facetank everything, turning pretty much every boss into a weekly yawnfest. So no, Im not mad about not being able to do raids anymore. Im mad because the balance was incomplete, badly done and totally ignored raids/fractals design.

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

yes I read it ... he was complaining about stacking mechanics punishing people for not stacking. That's a performance-based complaint ... even if the OP wants us to think it's not.

It is not, it actually is both a performance and boss mechanic based complaint... even if you want us to think it's not.

Convince yourself whatever you will. If it's NOT a performance based discussion, why the hell would the OP suggest that the raid content devs talk to the balance team? That makes no sense either; balance team doesn't influence 'not fun' raids at all. So which is it?

The basic complaint is that the last balance reduced options for comps and made it more restrictive in play if you want to maintain performance.

Compositions are based around boss mechanics and game design. I'm not even sure how you can suggest otherwise.

... good thing I have not ONCE so far suggested that compositions aren't based around game mechanics /shrug

Player performance very often plays less a role in meta comps designed by high skill raid guilds because all their players are top tier and as such the composition (which often get mirrored by the general community for lack of better understanding) are based around boss mechanics.

The complaint of TC as such makes sense, the balance team balances without the content in mind but simply with results say based on boon out put.

The idea that class skills are balanced around content doesn’t make sense, ever;

There have been times I thought, maybe you're not a troll. But this statement made it clear for me. So I'm gonna ignore future posts coming from you.

By your logic, everything should be and is balanced around flavour and look and thematic. But then gravedigger should hit downed players for 100% of their Downstate health, because it literally says, that it's digging their grave.
Or meteor shower doing 50k dmg per meteor. I mean, it's a freaking meteor shower, that would do huge dmg in real world.
Oh did i mention backstab, onehitting everyone, except heavy armor classes?

Especially in MMOs you need to balance skills around content.

there is much more constancy with classes and their abilities than there is with content and the mechanics that govern them. Also, it's hard enough for devs to just balance classes let alone ensure that whatever that balance is, it further restricted by the imaginations of content devs to ensure players subjective sense of what is 'fun' is placated to.

Sure, maybe there is too much favour towards stacking … and the solution to that shouldn’t be for the balance team to provide players with comps that allow them to ignore those mechanics like was happening with the absolutely and ridiculously broken Chrono boon giving, sharing AND duration increase builds.

@Obtena.7952 said:
The idea that class skills are balanced around content doesn’t make sense, ever;

And yet they are balanced that way. They always were (although in the beginning it was mostly SPvP content they were balanced around). And there were at least a few case of builds getting nerfed in all modes because they happened to be overperforming in one single situation (like that thief build that got hit with a nerfbat because someone used it to solo Sloth - even if it took him few hours). And guardian staff got first nerfed and completely redone later on only because some people were using it to attack through gates in WvW.

But yeah, classes aren't balanced around content. Not at all [/sarcasm]

The scope of what we are talking about here is instanced group content, and that is what my statement was referring to; if you want to change the goal posts in the discussion to include WvW to be semantic, then I get a chance to clarify. Anet isn't going to continue to allow a situation where people access OP'ed specs to trivialize game mechanics and content in PVE, even if it means it changes the 'fun' for a portion of the players.

But that's not what they are changing. All they do is impacting the group composition - the end result is exactly the same (although less fun to play, it is exactly as trivial as before).

Your examples are what appears to be fixing unintended features , not balancing because of performance

There were a ton of skills that were balanced for all modes due to their performance in one single mode. Anet's started splitting skills only recently, and even then they still don't split enough.
If you want a better example though, it would be the previous SoI change where its effect got cut by half, but extended to 10 players. That was balance done exactly around raids. It had no sense at all for Fractals for example, as it assumed a second group with another chrono, which in 5-man content is not going to happen obviously.
There you have it - a gamewide balance change done because of a performance in a very specific and niche content. Although you will probably think of a reason why that one doesn't count either.

@Aldath.1275 said:
Fault of the game design as a whole if in order to be successful you need a class whose only purpose is to spit out endless boons then.
If the game is clunky without boons, it isn't the fault of the class.

Exactly. If it's the core mechanics, not class ones at fault, change core mechanics instead of trying to "fix" the issue by nerfing classes.

The whole point of a social game is to play with the people you want to play with, not be forced to play with the people you don't.

Epidemic nerf because of raids.
Sand Shade nerf due to WvW.
Perma Stealth thief nerfed after Sloth was soloed despite being complained about for years in the WvW community.
Gutting "lootstick" because of WvW.
Keeping Necromancer in a terrible state in PvE for years due to how oppressive the class was and is in PvP and WvW.
Nerfing ride the Lightning because of PvP.

@Aldath.1275 said:
Fault of the game design as a whole if in order to be successful you need a class whose only purpose is to spit out endless boons then.
If the game is clunky without boons, it isn't the fault of the class.

I'm not 100% sure I understand you ^^

In general the problem is the game is an constant shift since it is released. The game has this weird feature were it is between an action MMO and an MMO in wow style with tab targeting and group boon/buff mechanic. This is the result of Arena Net trying to be different some features are nice and innovative as an result like the looting system or the progression system others are just ugly and counter intuitive.

It is just so with each expansion the shift in the direction of an action MMO got bigger first you needed more and more doge during a boss fight then you had also less and less possibilities to stack. First this change came in raids and then later with the new fractals and the once which got an overwork.

Resulting in the need for the chrono to wing it sometimes with SoI and the re sharing of the boons. Now we try re cast the boons as often as possible with FB + rev or stack forcefully and let another chrono extend the duration.

So far I can say people who don't accept this are stuck in 2012 before raids because the content evolved in this direction there is no way back.

And about raids being easy through time this is also not really this way through when you run content over and over its becomes easy because you optimize you movement and skills. I think Anet has really a bad idea what happens there.

@Aldath.1275 said:
Fault of the game design as a whole if in order to be successful you need a class whose only purpose is to spit out endless boons then.
If the game is clunky without boons, it isn't the fault of the class.

I'm not 100% sure I understand you ^^

In general the problem is the game is an constant shift since it is released. The game has this weird feature were it is between an action MMO and an MMO in wow style with tab targeting and group boon/buff mechanic. This is the result of Arena Net trying to be different some features are nice and innovative as an result like the looting system or the progression system others are just ugly and counter intuitive.

It is just so with each expansion the shift in the direction of an action MMO got bigger first you needed more and more doge during a boss fight then you had also less and less possibilities to stack. First this change came in raids and then later with the new fractals and the once which got an overwork.

Resulting in the need for the chrono to wing it sometimes with SoI and the re sharing of the boons. Now we try re cast the boons as often as possible with FB + rev or stack forcefully and let another chrono extend the duration.

So far I can say people who don't accept this are stuck in 2012 before raids because the content evolved in this direction there is no way back.

And about raids being easy through time this is also not really this way through when you run content over and over its becomes easy because you optimize you movement and skills. I think Anet has really a bad idea what happens there.

Raids aren't hard, that's why most of the people that raid consistently do so to improve their personal performance (i.e parsing DPS/uptimes) - along with social reasons too of course - it's not about the clear, it's about being efficient WHILE getting your clear. I've raided for like 3 months and I'm bored of Wing 1-4 already.

Contrary to what someone on page 1 posted, GW2 is NOT TERA. In action MMOs, with skill you can literally dodge like 99% of boss attacks (essentially only the ones the devs want you to eat intentionally as fight mechanics). There is a lot of random damage/CC in this game, like Dhuum bombs doing damage regardless of where you are in the arena or random bandits kicking you around on Sabetha. This makes it akin to WoW where you bring buffs to mitigate these.

I don't play a Mesmer yet, but it's clear to me the thread is split into two groups of people: the ones who are putting in the effort into explaining their point of view, in particular Yasi, and the other group who are just in here going "ha, not my problem, this is great" and acting like smug little hipsters. It's actually disgusting. Get off your high horse, GW2 isn't known as the most casual MMO for nothing.

@Obtena.7952 said:
I don't see a reason they need to ... it's not like there are so few comps that can complete content where raids need to be toned down to those comps. Maybe if people didn't try to just play how some website tells them, they would realize there ARE solutions to complete content outside of their narrow ideas of what they have been told is optimal.

See, this is the problem with pushing meta ... hardly any players know how to figure out how to play for themselves anymore. The can't figure out what to do when something changes.

for a lot of people it isn´t about completing the content anymore, if you are just in for the loot, maybe it isn´t the right content for you anyway. you can pretty much kill almost every boss with 10 necros autoatacking, but would that be fun? and thats the problem right now, you can either choose to play without optimal boons which is super akward and feels cluncky or play a super strict settup that make anoying (yes there are no hard mechanics, just anoying ones) mechanics even more anoying. missing out alc/quickness especially when you simply went for deleting a bomb at sabetha is the wort feeling ever. doing mechanics should be rewarding not punishing for your own gameplay expierience,

If the content isn't about completion and about the 'fun', then why is the thread complaining about how difficult the content is to complete? Seems to me we should stick to the thread for now.

The idea that the raid design team needs to talk to the class balance team so that raids are not 'impossible' to complete makes no sense. Anet knows what mechanics are possible to do in a raid, they know by what margins teams are successful at completing them. Stats they have will tell them what is reasonable for class changes and what isn't. The idea that these two groups talk to 'hard-engineer' raids is unnecessary and not based on what is happening in the game.

Did you read op? I don't see the word difficult. Raids are still easy, but a bit more annoying or unfun you could say.

yes I read it ... he was complaining about stacking mechanics punishing people for not stacking. That's a performance-based complaint ... even if the OP wants us to think it's not.

It is not, it actually is both a performance and boss mechanic based complaint... even if you want us to think it's not.

Convince yourself whatever you will. If it's NOT a performance based discussion, why the hell would the OP suggest that the raid content devs talk to the balance team? That makes no sense either; balance team doesn't influence 'not fun' raids at all. So which is it?

The basic complaint is that the last balance reduced options for comps and made it more restrictive in play if you want to maintain performance.

Compositions are based around boss mechanics and game design. I'm not even sure how you can suggest otherwise.

... good thing I have not ONCE so far suggested that compositions aren't based around game mechanics /shrug

Player performance very often plays less a role in meta comps designed by high skill raid guilds because all their players are top tier and as such the composition (which often get mirrored by the general community for lack of better understanding) are based around boss mechanics.

The complaint of TC as such makes sense, the balance team balances without the content in mind but simply with results say based on boon out put.

The idea that class skills are balanced around content doesn’t make sense, ever; there is much more constancy with classes and their abilities than there is with content and the mechanics that govern them. Also, it's hard enough for devs to just balance classes let alone ensure that whatever that balance is, it further restricted by the imaginations of content devs to ensure players subjective sense of what is 'fun' is placated to.

Sure, maybe there is too much favour towards stacking … and the solution to that shouldn’t be for the balance team to provide players with comps that allow them to ignore those mechanics like was happening with the absolutely and ridiculously broken Chrono boon giving, sharing AND duration increase builds.

For one thing... stacking IS a mechanic, is THE mechanic in mmos since, well, 2 decades now. LoS pull and stacking. Other mmos managed buffing, stacking and mechanics in raids/dungeons/whatever... why does Anet have such a hard time at it? My guess, because they dont actually have a set of groundrules and just adjust here and there to get a desired endresult, with rather not much success tbh.

I agree (except for the not much success part); it stems from Anet’s decision to avoid having a hardcoded structure for comps, like holy trinity. Holy trinity MMOs require certain spots filled with certain abilities to ensure success; GW2 has a much more relaxed approach. I believe as a consequence, when Anet goes to change something on a class, they are MUCH less restricted by content to make class changes because there isn’t a requirement for that class to fill a spot for group content. As a result, class balance and group content can be developed much more independently and if done with care, not lead to a situation where content isn’t ‘solvable’. Someone suggested that content and balance groups need to talk to each other to fix this ‘problem’ but that just forces a dependence between the two that isn’t necessary. In otherwords, the suggestion is that Anet revert to a hardcoded structure for comps. I works for other games but if Anet doesn't stays true to this selling point of the game, it would be disasterous IMO.

As it stands, Raid content team makes no requirement for certain classes in content and balance team sees no reason to constrain their ideas because of content … and we know this works. I see no reason to force the interaction, especially if the reason to do so is something as subjective as ‘fun’. It makes no sense to ever just make changes because of that because ‘fun’ isn’t a quantifiable metric that Anet can see if they are making progress towards. If rewards were dependent on the margin of success, you would have a point about fixing other comps before breaking others; If that interaction existed, balance would be WAY more complicated. … but it doesn’t. This leads me to this hypothesis:

A general sense of performance balance (between classes, comps, efforts, etc … ) is not needed in a game where we don’t have rewards linked to success margins; this results in why the balance team doesn’t need to refer to content team and finally, why we can continue to enjoy a ‘relaxed’ requirements approach to playing comps and builds we want and still be successful in group instances. It’s all linked to that no holy trinity decision. Most people wave it aside as a frivolous feature but it does have real and serious implications to how the game works, especially for people that are so engrained with the holy trinity model, that anything outside it seems like ‘failure’.

If you think balancing is only driven by performance and justified by comparisons to other classes then prepare to be educated:

@Jeknar.6184 said:
If bosses are dying without enraging, why are we complaining?

Because bosses need to die in optimal time with at least half of timer left as halved kill time means half as much mechanics and lot faster runs in general. Therefore squads should be optimized for maximal dps and minimal support (to very riskful degree). And no, potential wipes don't count. Wiping twice on most bosses is still faster than taking extra support 'cause extra support means getting close to enrage and soooo much more mechanics that wipe would happen inevitably anyway 'cause someone would mess up a mechanic for sure if kills take that long and even extra support wouldn't help it. Extra dps would've saved from that happening. And ofc we're not talking about anything that does 31k or less on golem, those builds aren't meta and risk a wipe with their lower dps. We need something with 34k+ dps since we can cover golem-like conditions on our runs with 100% certainty, especially when pugging.

^short version of the stuff Kitty hears when people explain the mandatoryness of metabuilds and strats in every situation.

Yeah, I'll never understand that line of thinking... I remember one of my old guilds had the habit of stacking Scourges on Vale Guardian and ignore greens because "going for green was a dps loss". Nevermind the people getting downed when the scourges were failing at properly stacking barrier, these clearly aren't dps loss. Nevermind the wipes that could have been avoided if we actually did the greens, those surely weren't a waste of time. And since they only raided for like 3hr/week, I usually would have to pug to complete my runs because we wasted much time on bosses that we could have done faster without ignoring mechanics...

I prefer a approach "The boss died? Good job" instead of complaining that we took more than 1:30 to make Vale Guardian split. Hell, even back in World of Warcraft my raid was such a mess that sometimes we would sometimes finish a boss fight with 2/10 people alive (But it died, so who cares?). Too bad these people didn't stick around after we came to GW2... I could use more people like that to clear this content without going through the headache of having to adapt to metaslaves that are unhappy because the boss died 1min after the world record time.

@Jeknar.6184 said:
If bosses are dying without enraging, why are we complaining?

Because bosses need to die in optimal time with at least half of timer left as halved kill time means half as much mechanics and lot faster runs in general. Therefore squads should be optimized for maximal dps and minimal support (to very riskful degree). And no, potential wipes don't count. Wiping twice on most bosses is still faster than taking extra support 'cause extra support means getting close to enrage and soooo much more mechanics that wipe would happen inevitably anyway 'cause someone would mess up a mechanic for sure if kills take that long and even extra support wouldn't help it. Extra dps would've saved from that happening. And ofc we're not talking about anything that does 31k or less on golem, those builds aren't meta and risk a wipe with their lower dps. We need something with 34k+ dps since we can cover golem-like conditions on our runs with 100% certainty, especially when pugging.

^short version of the stuff Kitty hears when people explain the mandatoryness of metabuilds and strats in every situation.

Yeah, I'll never understand that line of thinking... I remember one of my old guilds had the habit of stacking Scourges on Vale Guardian and ignore greens because "going for green was a dps loss". Nevermind the people getting downed when the scourges were failing at properly stacking barrier, these clearly aren't dps loss. Nevermind the wipes that could have been avoided if we actually did the greens, those surely weren't a waste of time. And since they only raided for like 3hr/week, I usually would have to pug to complete my runs because we wasted much time on bosses that we could have done faster without ignoring mechanics...

I prefer a approach "The boss died? Good job" instead of complaining that we took more than 1:30 to make Vale Guardian split. Hell, even back in World of Warcraft my raid was such a mess that sometimes we would sometimes finish a boss fight with 2/10 people alive (But it died, so who cares?). Too bad these people didn't stick around after we came to GW2... I could use more people like that to clear this content without going through the headache of having to adapt to metaslaves that are unhappy because the boss died 1min after the world record time.

I think he/she was sarcastic you can always stray away from the meta to some degree. All raids have just one hardcoded mechanic in common if you fail the enrage timer you die and you fail the enrage timer when you don't do enough dps and you don't do enough dps when you don't get the boons or fail your rota.

The funny thing is if everyone does everything correct e.g you got more then 2 minutes over at the val guard if more then 2 dps classes fail completely you fail the boss.
Beginners need a lot of skills to learn to get there like team work, movement, their rota ,boss mechanic and so on and sometimes need to change their gear. Getting all classes together to be able to run is also a challenge on its own.